A cinder cone located 11 km south of Big Pine, California, is vertically displaced 78 ± 6 m by the Fish Springs fault of the Owens Valley fault zone. The surfaces of Tahoe-age and Tioga-age alluvial fans that overlie the cone are vertically displaced 31 ± 3 and 3.3 ± 0.3 m, respectively. Neither the cinder cone nor the Tioga-age fan appears to have been laterally offset. The cone is dated by the 39Ar/40Ar method at 314,000 ± 36,000 yr B.P. (2σ), indicating an average late Quaternary vertical displacement rate of 0.25 ± 0.03 mm/yr (2σ). The age of the Tahoe glaciation is uncertain, but probably corresponds to the age of marine oxygen isotope stage 4 and/or 6 (65,000–75,000 and 128,000–195,000 yr, respectively). If the older fan were deposited during stage 4, then the average post-Tahoe vertical displacement rate probably was at least twice the pre-Tahoe late Quaternary rate. If the displacement rate has been constant during the last 314,000 yr, then the surface of the Tahoe-age fan is dated at 124,000 ± 19,000 yr B.P., and the bulk of the fan most likely would have been deposited during stage 6. Based on the displacement of the surface of the Tioga-age (10,600 – 26,000 yr) fan, the average Holocene displacement rate appears to have been slightly less than the average late Quaternary rate.

Radiocarbon dating of late Quaternary deposits and shorelines of Lake Mojave and cation-ratio numerical age dating of stone pavements (Dorn, 1984) on the adjacent Soda Mountains piedmont provide age constraints for alluvial and eolian deposits. These deposits are associated with climatically controlled stands of Lake Mojave during the past 15,000 yr. Six alluvial fan units and three eolian stratigraphic units were assigned ages based on field relations with dated shorelines and piedmont surfaces, as well as on soil-geomorphic data. All but one of these stratigraphic units were deposited in response to time-transgressive climatic changes beginning approximately 10,000 yr ago. Increased eolian flux rates occurred in response to the lowering of Lake Mojave and a consequent increase in fine-sediment availability. Increased rates of deposition of eolian fines and associated salts influenced pedogenesis, stone-pavement development, and runoff-infiltration relations by (1) enhancing mechanical weathering of fan surfaces and hillslopes and (2) forming clay- and silt-rich surface horizons which decrease infiltration. Changes in alluvial-fan source areas from hillslopes to piedmonts during the Holocene reflect runoff reduction on hillslopes caused by colluvial mantle development and runoff enhancement on piedmonts caused by the development of less-permeable soils. Inferred increased in early to middle Holocene monsoonal activity resulted in high-magnitude paleo-sheetflood events on older fan pavements; this runoff triggered piedmont dissection which, in turn, caused increased sediment availability along channel walls. Thus, runoff-infiltration changes during the late Quaternary have occurred in response to eolian deposition of fines, pedogenesis, increased sheetflood activity in the Holocene, and vegetational changes which are related to many complicated linkages among climatic change, lake fluctuations, and eolian, hillslope, and alluvial-fan processes.

Diatoms and lithological facies of an 8.45-m core collected from Shine swamp (47°52′20″N lat, 122°41′45″W long; about 2 m above the mean tide level) in the northern Puget Lowland reveal a rise in relative sea level during the past 6000 yr. A layer of fresh-water peat at a depth of 6.6-6.3 m (ca. 7000-5000 yr B.P.) indicates a low stand of the sea in early and middle Holocene time. About 5000 yr ago the rise in relative sea level resulted in accumulation of subtidal or lower intertidal clayey gyttja and gyttja which contain mainly marine and brackish-water diatoms (80–95%). By about 3500 yr B.P., the basin had shoaled to upper intertidal levels, and peat began to accumulate again while the sea continued its relative rise. During the period of this continuous peat growth, several alterations in fresh-water and marine/brackish-water diatom assemblages took place, indicating slight differences in the contemporaneous sea-level rise and vertical peat growth.

Many sources of magnetic minerals have been implicated as potential influences on the magnetic record of lake and ocean sediments. The “state-of-the-art” of our knowledge of these sources and their properties has been used to define a model which indicates those sedimentary environments where specific magnetic mineral sources may influence the magnetic record. Authigenically formed magnetic minerals are only likely to be found in estuaries and eutrophic lakes. Cosmic deposition, eolian deposition, and magnetic bacteria may be important in low-accumulation-rate deep-ocean sediments. Whereas catchment-derived material is only likely to be the sole source of the magnetic record in high-accumulation-rate, low-productivity lakes, fly ash is only likely to be a dominant source in very-low-accumulation-rate lake and ocean sediments.

The Kashmir Basin is filled with Pliocene-Pleistocene fluvio-lacustrine sediments. On the flank of the Pir Panjal these sediments, called “Lower Karewas”, are covered with loess deposits up to 25 m thick that contain numerous middle and late Pleistocene paleosols, mostly polygenetic pedocomplexes, which were classified by micromorphological studies. Thermoluminescence dates provide a chronostratigraphy of the late Pleistocene loess-paleosol sequences. On the Himalayan flank, the “Upper Karewas” are covered only with late Pleistocene loess-paleosol sequences. Their base is the last interglacial soil, developed ca. 110,000 ± 10,000 yr B.P. This soil is genetically comparable to the modern soil and, therefore, is thought to have developed under a deciduous forest in a “xeric” soil moisture regime. The loesses of last glacial age on both flanks of the basin contain three humus-rich Ah, mostly Aht, horizons, indicating three warm and mostly humid climatic episodes between ca. 80,000 and 50,000 yr B.P. The middle Pleistocene loesses contain at least four Bwt, or thick Bt, horizons developed during four interglacial periods, having climates similar to the present. Large parts of the Karewa Lake must have lasted until the end of the penultimate glacial age.

The last floods from glacial Lake Missoula, Montana, probably ran into glacial Lake Columbia, in northeastern Washington. In or near Lake Columbia's Sanpoil arm, Lake Missoula floods dating from late in the Fraser glaciation produced normally graded silt beds that become thinner upsection and which alternate with intervals of progressively fewer varves. The highest three interflood intervals each contain only one or two varves, and about 200–400 successive varves conformably overlie the highest flood bed. This sequence suggests that jökulhlaup frequency progressively increased until Lake Missoula ended, and that Lake Columbia outlasted Lake Missoula. The upper Grand Coulee, Lake Columbia's late Fraser-age outlet, contains a section of 13 graded beds, most of them sandy and separated by varves, that may correlate with the highest Missoula-flood beds of the Sanpoil River valley. The upper Grand Coulee also contains probable correlatives of many of the approximately 200–400 succeeding varves, as do nearby parts of the Columbia River valley. This collective evidence casts doubt on a prevailing hypothesis according to which one or more late Fraser-age floods from Lake Missoula descended the Columbia River valley with little or no interference from Lake Columbia's Okanogan-lobe dam.

Investigation of snail-bearing alluvium from the Smyth Crossing site in Uvalde County, Texas, indicates that the terrestrial gastropod fauna of this area has been stable for at least 3000 yr. However, relative proportions and presence/absence variations indicate changes in the relative occurrence of preferred microhabitats of certain snails. Gastropods from an excavated soil column reveal a succession of gastropod associations in response to succession of the plant community of the site from a riverside gravel bar to an upland savannah/grassland. Human impact on the gastropods is mostly contemporary, with apparent local extirpations of some species having occurred. The recovered paleofaunas provide no evidence for regional climatic change since 3000 yr B.P.